


Personal Space

by notaverse



Series: JE Fleet [1]
Category: Johnny's Entertainment, KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Crack, Crossdressing, Electrocution, M/M, Military, Space Pirates, attempted genocide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-01
Updated: 2011-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:34:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notaverse/pseuds/notaverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Akanishi Jin, former space pirate and current captain of the JE ship AT-TUN, accepts a mission that could put an end to the war ravaging the Sol System. Such a small thing, to remove the tactical advisor of the Fahngarlian fleet, but by no means simple. Not when said advisor happens to be his ex-partner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** Personal Space  
>  **Series:** JE Fleet  
>  **Fandom:** JE (primarily KAT-TUN)  
>  **Genre:** Alternate Universe. Also: sci-fi, comedy, angst, romance. Oh, does 'crack' count as a genre?  
>  **Rating:** R for violence and m/m activity between consenting adults  
>  **Pairing:** Primarily Kame x Jin, but many others are hinted at. Hopefully there is something for everyone to appreciate in there.  
>  **Disclaimer:** Yes, I'm writing about real people in an entirely fictitious universe. I do not own the following groups: KAT-TUN, NEWS, Arashi, Kanjani8, Tackey  & Tsubasa, though if I did I would be the happiest woman on Earth. I am making no money from this fic. (I don't own V6 either, but they're only in one line for cannon fodder.)

On the bridge of the JE fleet's newest Jaguar-class ship, the AT-TUN, the crew were taking a well-deserved break from their duties. Lieutenant Tanaka Koki, normally in charge of Security, was catching forty winks behind his station. Ensign Taguchi Junnosuke, resident Communications expert, was thoroughly engrossed in the long-distance racing game he was playing against Ninomiya Kazunari on the NES 5000. Hotshot pilot Ensign Nakamaru Yuichi was demonstrating his beatboxing skills to some of the trainees, and even Commander Ueda Tatsuya, the second-in-command, was relaxing with his guitar.

The peace was shattered, however, when a crash from the door jarred them all back to reality. Ueda accidentally played the wrong chord, Junno forgot to hit the brakes and slammed his car into a brick wall, and Nakamaru had a coughing fit that woke Koki up from his nap. They all glanced at the sliding doors, which were threatening to buckle inwards from the force being used against them.

Ueda sighed. "Captain!" he called through the door. "Press your thumb to the panel on the wall!"

There was a moment of silence, then the doors shuddered once and creaked open. Akanishi Jin, ex-space pirate and current captain of the AT-TUN, stepped through the gap. He glared at the offending doors, which shut halfway before admitting defeat.

Jin turned to his crew and beamed, dazzling them all with the full force of his smile. "Commander Tat-chan, make a note! The bridge doors need fixing."

"I'm not your private secretary," Ueda pointed out, annoyed. "And if you'd stop and think before trying to force the doors open, we wouldn't have to keep getting them fixed. That's the seventh set since we were assigned to this ship!"

The captain's smile faltered for all of three seconds. "It's only been six months," he protested. "I'm still getting used to it. You guys are too, right?"

The other four had joined the JE at the same time as their captain, following him when he decided to give up the glamorous-but-not-always-that-successful life of a space pirate and go legit. His friendship with Commodore Yamashita, himself a former smuggler, had gotten them the newest ship in the fleet. Jin had named it himself, though to him, the name always seemed unfinished, like it was missing something. Another initial. Another former pirate, his co-captain and so much more...if Kame had been with them still...

But nobody talked about Kamenashi Kazuya anymore. Not when Jin was around.

There was a general chorus of, "No, that's just you, Captain!" and Jin sank into his usual seat, rubbing the bruises he'd acquired in attempting to open the door. It wasn't his fault the ship just didn't like him - it was always putting things in his way, or making them impossible to open, though the rest of the crew never seemed to have that problem. They were good guys, all of them, but because of their background, they had the worst reputation in the fleet. They refused to wear the regulation uniforms, they carried unorthodox side-arms and never saluted anyone. (Except Admiral Takizawa and his partner, Earth President Tsubasa, because nobody could help it.)

But that was all going to change. Jin had a plan, carefully formulated late last night in the middle of an extended drinking session with the commodore, that was going to put an end to their war with the Fahngarlians once and for all. He'd be a hero, and his crew would finally receive the glory they deserved.

"Ensign Taguchi!"

Junno dropped his controller and blushed guiltily. "Yes, Captain?"

"We're still in communications range of the last group of Fahngarlian scoutships that passed through, aren't we?"

Koki regarded his captain with suspicion. "As head of Security I'd like to remind you that it's in all our best interests if you don't do anything stupid."

"Too late," Ueda muttered, and Nakamaru nodded in agreement.

"We're in range, but..." Junno let the sentence hang, not because he didn't know how to finish it but because a victorious message from Nino popped up on the screen and he had to send a reply to challenge him to a re-match. Just because Nino's birthday was coming up didn't mean Junno was going to let him win.

Jin stood up, placed his left hand on his hip and raised his right index finger in the air. "Then," he declared, "we're going to send them a message! I was chatting to Yamapi last night and you know what? No one's actually tried talking to the aliens! Not one human in the entire Sol System has ever spoken to them, let alone asked them what they want."

Nakamaru, who'd flown against them several times, knew perfectly well what they wanted. "They want to kill us. Either that or they show affection in their culture by shooting people with plasma torpedoes."

"But without asking them, you won't know which," Jin said, shaking his head and smiling in an 'I told you so' fashion. "Broadcast a message on all channels - something friendly and maybe just a little bit cute." He saw Koki make a move towards Junno and hastily added, "And no rap. We don't want to confuse them."

Ueda strummed a few bars of 'It's the End of the World As We Know It' and approached Jin. "Captain, you want to make friends with the people who've been trying to wipe out mankind for the last year? Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Of course it is. It's my idea, and I'm going to take the credit for it. But if there's any reward money, I'll share it with you guys." Once a pirate, always a pirate, and Jin was always generous with the booty.

There was nothing the rest of the crew could do. Once the captain made up his mind, there was only one person who could make him change it. But Kame could be anywhere in the universe by now.

Junno did his best to comply with Jin's wishes, adopting a light and cheerful tone. "Moshi moshi? AT-TUN no Taguchi desu! Fahngarlian-san-tachi to hanashitai- ugh!" He stopped abruptly when Koki kicked the back of his chair.

"They're aliens! Of course they're not going to speak Japanese!"

"Koki's right," Jin said. "Try English!"

There had been a move to make English the intergalactic standard language, but with humans from every country on Earth having joined in the mass colonisation of other planets, most people retained their mother tongue as their primary form of communication. For the majority of the JE fleet, that was Japanese. Following the election eight years ago of Imai Tsubasa as Earth President, making him the man with overall political control of the entire Sol System, an increasing number of new recruits were of Japanese origin.

Still rubbing his back, Junno obediently tried again, but only managed to produce a somewhat strangled "Check it out!"

"I can do better," Jin said scornfully. "Let me have a go."

He strode over to Junno's station, pressed the big green button and launched into a torrent of casual American English he'd picked up from staying in LA for six months, back when he was still living on Earth. Unfortunately, he hit the shipboard radio at the same time, ensuring his message was accompanied by a secret recording of Koki rapping 'Shorty'.

There was an anguished wail from Koki, who ducked out of sight, and Ueda addressed his captain sternly. "You promised to remove those comm links in the showers," he said.

Jin pouted. "But I like it when you guys sing so I can dance to it! I have to do something to keep myself in shape now that we're no longer attacking rich traders."

The war with the Fahngarlians had put an end to piracy as a profitable lifestyle, as anyone who could afford to do so stayed at home, or made a fast exit to Alpha Centauri. Pickings were slim round the Sol System, and Jin and his crew had been forced to find a new source of income. Fortunately, the military was so desperate for recruits that they'd take *anybody*.

At that moment there was a flash of light from the centre of the bridge, and Commodore Yamashita Tomohisa, nicknamed 'Yamapi' by Admiral Takizawa for his love of pink ships, materialised on the AT-TUN. Captain and Commodore performed a complicated secret handshake they'd developed back in their junior days as runners for old man Kitagawa, then Yamapi elbowed Jin out of the way and made a beeline for the abandoned captain's seat. He sank down into the soft, leather-cushioned chair with a sigh of relief, clutching his head.

"Why haven't you got a hangover?" he asked Jin.

Jin gave him a secretive smile and winked, causing one of the younger and more impressionable trainees to swoon into Ueda's arms. "Because as a dashing young captain I'm in much better shape than a commodore who spends all his time lazing around on his bright pink flagship and never sees any real action."

Yamapi snorted. "Hah. I'll have you know it's a tough job keeping the fleet in line. I get all the action I need just trying to keep control of you and your crew, never mind Captain Shibutani and his gang of lunatics."

Jin looked at the massive viewscreen showing the rest of the fleet, where the multi-coloured K8 could clearly be seen next to Yamapi's flagship, the Pin. "Subaru can be a handful," he agreed. "So why are you here instead of locked in a conference room?"

"Two things." With some difficulty, the commodore raised his head and looked Jin in the eye. "First, I'm here on behalf of the entire JE fleet to tell you to stop broadcasting on all channels. You're coming through loud and clear on all speakers, and it's annoying. It's stupid trying to contact the aliens like that."

"Hey!" Jin was indignant. "You told me it was a great plan last night!"

"I also told Shige he had to stop doing kitty cosplay with Koyama when he was on-duty, so clearly I said a lot of dumb things last night."

"Ah hah!" Nakamaru crowed triumphantly. "That explains a lot about the weird messages I kept getting when I was trying to sleep. What's wrong with my face?"

Captain and commodore exchanged guilty looks, struggled to remember what they'd said in their numerous drunken messages, and gave up at more or less the same time. "Absolutely nothing," Jin said soothingly. "Your face is perfect, just like Koki's hairstyle."

The shaven-headed lieutenant popped up, his mortification forgotten, and demanded to know what was wrong with his hair. Jin informed him that it was fitting for the man in charge of Security to have such an intimidating look; placated, Koki sat back down.

"And now for something much more important than Captain Bakanishi's attempt to singlehandedly end this war by making the aliens so mad that they blast us all out of the universe."

"Akanishi!"

"That's what I said." Yamapi tried, unsuccessfully, to brush his bangs out of his eyes. He was thoroughly disheveled, which wasn't an unusual state for him even when he hadn't spent the night drinking with friends. Unlike the crew of the AT-TUN, the commodore wore the elegant black-and-red uniform of the JE Fleet, though he hadn't been able to resist adding a few touches of his own. The stylish black jacket was festooned with strips of bright pink ribbon and random swatches of fur from long-dead animals, and the combination was not so much "eye-catching" as "vision-destroying".

Jin, who was going for the simpler option of black leather trousers and a plain white shirt - buttoned only halfway, of course - was getting impatient. "You can't call me an idiot, Pi. Not after what I saw you trying to do to that hologram of Admiral Takki last night."

Yamapi had the good grace to look embarrassed. "I just wanted to thank him for all the help he's given me in my career," he protested weakly, but judging by the chorus of "Admiral's pet!", nobody was buying it. "Anyway," he continued, "do you want to hear your mission or not?"

"We have a mission? Really?" The disbelief in Jin's voice was swamped by excitement. The AT-TUN was sorely under-utilised, despite being one of the most heavily-armed ships in the fleet, because nobody was quite sure what its wild-card captain was likely to do with that much firepower at his disposal.

Yamapi nodded. "Really," he said solemnly. "And you're the only person who can do it."

The ensuing backslapping, high-fiving, hugging and general party atmosphere died after five minutes when Commander Ueda asked, "So what is it?"

The commodore fished around in his jacket pockets for a few moments and pulled out a data disc, which he threw to Junno to load. "I received this about an hour ago. This is the latest information we've got on the Fahngalians, courtesy of Sakurai Sho from the Agency of Really Awesome, Smart and Handsome Individuals."

Jin groaned. "Why does our Intelligence division sound like a talent agency?"

"Because they're UNDERCOVER," Yamapi told him matter-of-factly. "They don't want people knowing they're military intelligence, do they?"

"And I suppose Aiba's an essential part of that cover?"

"Well..." Yamapi shrugged. "He made it in with two out of three. Besides, we needed someone to name the new spaceship types. Where do you think the 'Fuzzy Lion' came from?"

The data disc finally stuttered to life, replacing the external view on the main screen with a familiar face.

"MatsuJun!" the AT-TUN crew exclaimed in unison.

"MatsuJun Version 3.0," Yamapi corrected them. "He's been upgrading himself again."

Arashi's cool, stylish and always-in-fashion weapons designer wasn't shy about making use of the latest in cybernetic enhancements, even in wartime, and another one of the impressionable trainees fell into a dead faint.

Jin regarded the younger members of his crew in disgust. "That's the last time I volunteer to train rookies," he muttered.

Evidently, it wasn't just the trainees who were powerless in the face of MatsuJun's beauty. The viewscreen sputtered, gave a short burst of static, and died in a fit of bliss, leaving the image frozen on the screen.

"Somebody switch that thing off!"

"Yes, Captain!"

Under a barrage of attacks from Ueda and Koki and the threat of Jin's blaster, the screen reluctantly switched itself back to the external view of the JE fleet. Junno popped the now-melted disc out and returned it to Yamapi.

"It's a good thing I brought a hard copy too," he said, and pulled out a sheaf of papers. Rather than giving them to Jin, however, he stared at them for a moment, shook his head, donned a pair of glasses and tried again. "Right," he said dizzily, "the intelligence. Do you know why we're losing this war?"

"Because you won't let me lead a squadron of fighters against the enemy ships?" suggested Nakamaru.

"Because we have a 'failure of communicating'!" Junno said brightly in English.

"Because we're outnumbered?" Koki reasoned.

"Because our leaders are idiots," Ueda muttered.

"Because the aliens are *weird*," Jin said. "Just look at the tactics they've been using! How are we supposed to combat things like them flooding our ventilation systems with glitter so we all choke?"

Every man on board shuddered, remembering the painful-but-oh-so-shiny fate of the V6, one of the most recent casualties of war.

"It feels kinda strange saying it, but...Jin's right," Yamapi said. "The Fahngalians have a master strategist working for them. Their battle tactics changed drastically seven months ago, when they started winning more skirmishes and becoming bolder with their attacks. Thanks to Arashi, we finally know who's behind it."

Jin had a bad feeling about this. A really bad feeling, like the time he'd made the mistake of asking Captain Shibutani Subaru for a date and known instantly that it was never going to work.

"Their strategist is," Yamapi paused for dramatic effect, "Kamenashi Kazuya!"

Instead of the stunned gasps and astonished faces he'd been expecting, the commodore's announcement was met with stony silence. The command crew looked warily at each other, then at their captain.

Jin's face was unreadable, devoid of emotion. He held himself perfectly still, hands forcibly restrained at his sides, his features a frozen mask.

"Jin?" Yamapi said hesitantly.

The impassive mask cracked enough for a few low, harshly spoken words. "I never want to hear that name again."

Yamapi staggered to his feet and put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but Jin shrugged him off. He didn't want sympathy from his best friend, and he certainly didn't want it from his commanding officer. Yamapi had already joined the military by the time Kame disappeared; even so, Jin had turned to him for solace just as much as his crew.

They'd been inseparable, the two co-captains Akanishi Jin and Kamenashi Kazuya, terrors of the trade routes. Equally skilled and unable to agree on who should be captain, they'd consented to share the position.

It hadn't been all they shared.

Their first ship - stolen, of course - had been a tiny Striped Tiger Mk II, with only two cabins. The six of them had crammed in, sharing three to a cabin and not standing on ceremony. Everyone worked together, and if anyone felt uncomfortable in such close conditions, they never said a word.

Before long, their spoils amounted to more than they could carry, even converting to currency as they went along. They captured a Leopard-style cruiser from a rich industrialist with a taste for jailbait, and after some heavy-duty redecorating they had all the room they wanted. Luckily, the two largest cabins were the same size, so the co-captains didn't have to squabble over who got the biggest room. They were also next to each other, and had a connecting door.

Over the next four years, that door saw a lot of use. Especially at night. Celebratory bouts at midnight inevitably ended the same way, with one sleepy captain curled up round the other, sated and secure. The crew knew that whichever cabin their leaders were in, they'd be together, and thus let them lie in every day so as to avoid catching them at an awkward moment.

But the good times couldn't last forever. There was pressure on the military to do something about the increased pirate activity in the Sol System, and Yamapi, a captain himself at the time, was sent to forcibly dissuade them. He'd known them all well, hadn't wanted to take them in, but he'd had no problem tracking them down. He'd been authorised to offer them a pardon if they went straight and returned their ill-gotten gains - the best deal he could negotiate with Earth President Tsubasa - but Kame hadn't cared for the idea.

Jin hadn't been all that certain about it himself, but he knew they couldn't go on as they had been for much longer. An alien fleet had been making attacks on the outlying colonies in the Sol System and scouts had been spotted as far inward as Mars. People were becoming paranoid, taking fewer risks, and that meant he and the others had to pull more jobs planet-side, or risk docking at the vast, wheel-shaped orbital colonies.

Not wanting to alarm his crew, he'd met with Yamapi again privately to discuss his options. He hadn't told Kame, and when the other captain found out...

Exactly what Kame had been so upset about, Jin had never been able to ascertain. He'd woken up the next morning with a splitting headache and an empty bed, only to find his partner had packed his things, taken his share of the profits and disappeared in the faster of their two shuttles at some point during the night. Ueda, who'd been on watch at the time, hadn't been able to enlighten him. Kame had said he was feeling restless and that Ueda should go to bed - he'd take the watch himself. The autopilot was keeping them in a secure orbit round Phobos, and Ueda hadn't considered there to be anything amiss.

Jin had used every contact he'd ever made to try to track down Kame, but never found so much as a trace of him. The man had simply disappeared, and there was nothing Ueda, Yamapi or anyone else could do to convince Akanishi Jin that his partner was gone for good. It wasn't until war had officially broken out and Akanishi, Taguchi, Tanaka, Ueda and Nakamaru had joined the military that Jin stopped being angry and confused, and started focusing on pulling himself back together for the sake of his new ship.

He was still heartbroken, though. At least he hadn't had to give anything back - Tsubasa had taken one look at his forlorn face and immediately pardoned all five of them, instructing Admiral Takizawa, his other half and the man in charge of the Sol System's defenses, to keep a close watch on them. Takki had promptly delegated to the newly promoted Commodore Yamashita, who, thrilled that Jin was going to join him at last, took the bold step of giving him an expensive ship and legitimizing his captaincy.

And now he was going to make him work for it.

"Jin, I know you don't want to hear this," Yamapi said gently, "but the information's correct. Arashi's Ohmiya team nearly died to get it, and we can't afford to ignore it. You understand? Kamenashi is working for the Fahngarlians and if we remove him, perhaps we can bring this war to an end."

Jin kept his eyes averted, carefully avoiding the sympathy he knew he'd see on the faces of his friends. "I should've known," he murmured. "Who else would contaminate the Titan colony's water supply with hair dye?"

As one man, the crew clutched their stomachs in sympathy for the lost souls of Titan, every last one of them dying a redhead.

"If it's any consolation," the commodore continued, "we don't think he's helping them of his own free will. There's a mention in the report that he was acting strangely...and had track marks all over his arms." He stepped back and waited for the explosion.

Jin whirled around and snatched the papers from Yamapi's hands. "So either they've got him drugged or he's a junkie! What do you expect me to do about it?"

Seeing that Jin was making no attempt to actually read the papers, Yamapi stole them back. He found the pictures he was looking for and held them out to the captain. "You see this cluster of ships? That's the bulk of the Fahngarlian fleet currently stationed near Jupiter. Which one do you think Kame's on?"

Jin studied the photographs intently, looking over each of the ships in turn. It wasn't the first time he'd seen a picture of the enemy fleet, but more often than not he'd only run into lone ships, or at worst a small patrol. Their ships didn't look much different from those built at Sol's main shipyard on Mars, though presumably they didn't have the odd feline naming system. There were several large vessels that looked near-identical to the sleek Panther Destroyers, and a handful that might have been Lynx Carriers at the back.

Right in the middle, protected by a small group of fighters, was a cruiser of a similar shade of pink to Yamapi's flagship, though it had additional silver stripes running along the hull. It was clearly the centre of attention, the flashiest ship in the fleet.

Jin pointed at it and said, "I want to say that one, but..."

Right at the back, partially obscured by larger ships, was a comparatively small craft of the same dull grey as the bulk of the fleet, utterly non-descript and lacking in personality. It was bland, boring, and had all the charisma of a speck of dust.

"That one," Jin said firmly, pointing with conviction. "The nobody at the back. He's hiding out there."

Yamapi grinned. "Good guess. How'd you know?"

"Maybe he's drugged or brainwashed but he's not stupid. A human attempting to destroy his own people? He'd be the first target on everyone's list, no sense making himself visible - unlike some people with their ships that look like they've been dipped in strawberry milkshake..."

Yamapi ignored the slight and fished out another piece of paper. "Here are the blueprints for that ship. There aren't that many places Kame could be - according to Nino, they're carrying a lot of cargo and it's spilling over into the living quarters."

"What is?"

"The furniture." The commodore shrugged. "Don't ask me why, but apparently they're transporting a load of chairs."

Jin flashed back to some of Kame's more unusual tastes, and shook his head to banish the memory. It refused to leave. His eyes started to mist over and he wondered if he was about to tear up from nostalgia. Then he noticed everyone else was doing the same thing, and realised it was all Yamapi's fault. The commodore was wielding a can of hairspray in a futile attempt to tame his bangs.

"Use mousse or something!" Jin yelled at him, trying not to cough.

The other man gave him a look of wide-eyed innocence. "But I'm not carrying any mousse."

Much to everyone's surprise, Koki whipped out a can of mousse from one of the vast pockets of his non-regulation hooded sweatshirt, thus resolving the hair issue. One of the remaining conscious trainees was sent to fetch refreshments. Ten minutes, two pieces of cake and a good, stiff drink later, everyone had recovered whatever degree of composure they usually managed to achieve and the briefing resumed.

"I shouldn't have drunk that, should I?" Yamapi moaned, collapsing back onto Jin's chair. Various members of the AT-TUN crew murmured their agreement and speculated on whether or not to call the Pin and ask them to teleport their wayward leader home. He didn't care for the idea. "They'll have to wait. I haven't finished giving Captain Bakanishi his mission yet."

"Akanishi!"

"That's what I said. Anyway, you need to get on board that ship. If Kame's under the influence of something, you're the best chance we've got of making him see sense. Get him out any way you can. Preferably alive, but I'll understand if something unavoidable happens."

For a change, Jin didn't like the suggestive tone of Yamapi's voice. The implication that he might decide to kill his ex-partner as revenge for upping and leaving him without a word... Even if Kame was really trying to kill off the entire human race, Jin couldn't, in all good conscience, do the same to him without hearing his explanation. Especially if he'd been coerced in some way. It wouldn't explain why he'd left Jin, but Jin had resigned himself to never knowing the reason he'd had his heart broken into millions of tiny, jagged pieces.

"I'm not killing Kame," he said softly. "And even if you'd ordered me to, I wouldn't."

"I wouldn't order you to do such a thing." Yamapi looked around the motley crew of the AT-TUN and added, "Not like you guys ever follow orders anyway. You're out of teleport range for the Fahngarlian fleet, so you'll have to get in closer. You've got spare bracelets, right?"

Jin jangled his silver teleport bracelet, a fashionable but practical accessory designed by MatsuJun. "Hundreds," he said airily.

Ueda started to protest that actually, they only had a few dozen left thanks to the captain's habit of misplacing his bangles, but decided his time would be better employed in hiding the remainder. The AT-TUN and its subordinate crafts were the first ships they'd ever had with teleport capability, and even after six months the novelty had yet to wear off.

"Nakamaru can fly me closer in the Beat Box. It's only a three-seater, but it's got cloaking technology and that'll get me in teleport range without them detecting us."

Nakamaru perked up as Jin mentioned his name, eager for the chance to fly his beloved fighter into enemy territory. The fleet's reluctance to use him in combat meant that most of the Beat Box's flight time was spent joyriding around with Koki. The AT-TUN itself spent so little time flying with any urgency that the autopilot was usually sufficient to take care of the ship's needs.

"We can definitely do it," the pilot agreed. "They'll never notice us at all."

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Ueda asked. "As far as we can tell from the corpses we've recovered, the Fahngarlian ships are staffed only by females. Our captain, pretty though he is, isn't a girl." Suddenly conscious of everyone's stares, the commander casually rubbed away his lipstick with the back of his hand and added, "And if anyone tries to make me go, I'm going to beat them up."

The bridge was suddenly filled with loud exclamations of how butch, masterful and just darn manly their commander and resident boxing champion was.

"Ueda can't go because he has to stay and run the ship," Jin declared, and no one was going to contradict him. "I've got the blueprints, remember? I'll memorize the layout and keep out of sight. If I'm spotted I'll just call Nakamaru to teleport me out and he can put me down again somewhere else. Besides," he patted the stunner hanging from one hip and the customised blaster hanging from the other, "I'll have these."

Jin had seen some of the Fahngarlian corpses retrieved from downed fighters, and every last one of them had looked like a human female. Despite the savage attacks they'd made on his species, he wasn't keen on the idea of shooting them down - not unless they shot first, which they didn't seem to have a problem with. If their species had males, they evidently kept them somewhere secret, perhaps back home on Fahngarl in Andromeda. Not much was known about the planet, though scientists had determined its make-up was similar to Earth, and so Jin didn't anticipate any breathing difficulties on his mission.

In any case, if Kame really was on board the Fahngarlian ship, he had to be breathing somehow. Jin ushered Yamapi out of his seat and settled down to study the blueprints. He'd worry about getting Kame out first - stun him him if had to - and then allow himself to think about what to say to the man who'd walked out on him.


	2. Chapter 2

"You're sure they can't detect us?" Jin asked for the fifteenth time since the Beat Box had launched, leaving the AT-TUN hidden in an asteroid field.

Patiently, Nakamaru once again stopped his beatboxing ("Consider it in-flight entertainment, Captain!") and reassured Jin that yes, there was no way his fighter would be picked up on any of the alien sensors. He figured it didn't matter what he said, since the captain wasn't really listening.

Jin had barely spoken on the journey, except to ask about their cloaked status, and he'd done his best to avoid thinking about what he was going to do when he saw Kame again. A part of him wanted very much to greet his ex-partner with a right hook and a demand for an explanation. Another part, which he considered to be something of a traitor, yearned desperately to pin Kame to the wall and kiss him till he forgot why he'd walked out in the first place, much less signed up for the destruction of humanity.

"I'm sure once Kame sees you, he'll be his old self again," Nakamaru said. "He must still love you."

Jin snorted. "What makes you think so?"

"He didn't take your share of the profits, he didn't kill you on his way out and he didn't steal his favourite scarf back from your wardrobe. Shouldn't that mean something?"

"Well...he did like that scarf, didn't he?"

"Right. Though I suppose he could just have forgotten it, or thought it wasn't worth bothering about..."

"You're not helping!"

When they were at what Nakamaru declared to be "a safe distance", Jin slipped the extra teleport bracelet over his wrist and made sure his weapons were easily accessible beneath his long black coat.

"Comm check," he said as he tapped the small, stylized bulldog pinned to the inside of his shirt pocket. The words reverberated through the minuscule cockpit and Jin was satisfied that he could contact Nakamaru when he needed to be brought back - with or without Kame.

The pilot set the coordinates and wished him good luck, and Jin responded with a sickly grin. If he was ever going to go through with this, it had to be now. There was only one thing left to say.

"Teleport."

\-----

The change in atmosphere hit Jin immediately, going from the stuffy, enclosed cockpit of the tiny fighter to the cool, dry air of the Fahngarlian ship. He'd had Nakamaru set him down in the cargo bay, figuring he could hide easily enough for as long as it took him to get his bearings. It was a night-cycle, but he had no way of knowing if the Fahngarlians would be asleep, or even if they slept at all, so teleporting directly into the living quarters would be too risky. Better to get the lay of the land first.

As Nino's report had mentioned, the cargo bay was full of chairs of all shapes and sizes, many of them with a tie attached to the back. Of life, however, it was empty. Jin wasted maybe thirty seconds gawking at the furniture, then checked his mental map of the ship.

There were only three decks, of which the lowest - his current location - had no crew quarters. The bridge was on the next deck up, and if Kame was playing the part of tactical advisor it was possible that he was there. If he was asleep or otherwise off-duty, it was probably on the uppermost deck, where all the cabins were to be found. The chances of Kame being on the lowest deck were so remote as to be non-existent, but Jin hadn't asked to be teleported there on a whim.

At the far end of the cargo bay was an emergency access shaft, fully enclosed, which ran straight up the height of the ship. There were exits built in at all three decks, and Jin intended to use the shaft to make his way, unseen, up to find Kame. He was counting on there being a ladder present, since the aliens obviously couldn't fly, and was happy to see he was right. Thanking his inner style guru that he'd remembered to put on gloves before leaving, he grasped the cold metal of the ladder and began to climb.

\-----

What felt like hundreds of rungs later, Jin was beginning to wonder if Yamapi had accidentally forgotten to give him a couple of blueprints for, say, an extra deck or two. He'd passed one exit already, but the upper deck was nowhere in sight and he was getting tired of climbing. He reached a flat ledge, set opposite the ladder, and sat down for a rest, bracing his legs against the wall. He leaned back and promptly tumbled through the shaft exit.

Straight into a pile of clothing.

Jin picked himself up from the floor, removed the worn denim jacket that had somehow got tangled round his neck, and checked out his surroundings. He'd landed in a walk-in closet, stuffed with every variety of clothing he'd ever seen and a few more that were completely new to him. The shaft had been covered up by a hanging rail full of coats; he'd have been surprised if it had ever been used.

The was no light, but enough trickled in from the window pane set in the closet door that visibility wasn't a problem. Cautiously, Jin crept up to the window and peered out, hand poised over his comm badge to call Nakamaru for a rescue. What he saw was enough to make him disregard the risk and gently push open the door.

Kamenashi Kazuya, fast asleep.

His face was half-covered by blankets, but Jin would know it anywhere, pale in the lamplight and framed by dyed copper hair. He'd caressed that soft skin, run his fingers through the silken strands, and ached with need while the same was done to him. Old memories of better times surged from the depths of Jin's mind and he bit his lip to keep from waking the other man.

Every step closer to the bed was a small victory, and each a minor temptation. Could he somehow draw back the blankets, lock the bracelet round Kame's wrist and have them both teleported back to the Beat Box without a struggle? Or was Kame merely feigning sleep, lying in wait to attack him if he took another step?

Jin dismissed his last thought as paranoid and edged nearer to the bed before he could change his mind. Kame was within reach now, a softly slumbering mass of contradictions and treachery bundled under the blankets. Wishing like crazy that he'd had the good sense to delegate the task to someone else - preferably someone who'd never met Kame - Jin took hold of the corner of the outer blanket and gently tugged it aside.

And froze, as Kame stirred, murmuring Jin's name so faintly that Jin thought he might have been imagining things.

Heavy footsteps clomped outside the door and stopped. Jin darted back into the closet and camouflaged himself behind a set of bright red overalls, draping a blue feather boa round his neck for additional cover and topping it off with a pair of oversized yellow sunglasses. Confident that absolutely nobody in their right mind would be looking for that particular clothing combination, he settled down to watch through the window.

The cabin door slid open to reveal a Fahngarlian - the first living example of the species that Jin had ever seen. She was tall and fair-skinned, with long black hair that hung straight to her waist. Her uniform was simple, a light blue tunic over black leggings, and she wore an odd headset around her ears and mouth. Her face, though expressionless, did not look unfriendly.

The shockstick hanging from her side was another matter entirely.

Jin stopped breathing as the Fahngarlian approached Kame, then resumed when she showed no signs of posing a threat to him. Instead, she remained a respectable distance from the bed and said something in her own language. Whether or not Kame understood it, Jin didn't know, but it was sufficient to wake him up.

Kame yawned, blinked and sat up, looking more bored than anything else. "What is it?" he asked.

The alien switched on the overhead light, adjusted something on her headset and responded in heavily accented Japanese. "Your presence is required on the bridge, sir. We're approaching the planet Mars and Captain Jennifer wishes you to offer tactical advice."

Jin was puzzled. Jennifer? Why Jennifer? Wasn't that a human name? He'd been expecting something weird and outlandish. Maybe the Fahngarlians weren't satisfied with merely wiping out the entire human race - they wanted to steal their identities too.

Kame stared at the girl, making no attempt to move.

"Please," she tried again. "We need your expertise. The shipyards will be heavily defended - your people will not want to surrender them."

"My people?" Kame spat out. "My people? I left them a long time ago." He threw the blankets aside and stood up, revealing a pair of fuzzy yellow pyjamas. "I'll join you when I'm dressed. But...this is the last time. I'll help you capture the shipyards, then I'm leaving."

"Leaving?" The Fahngarlian sounded horrified. "Why? Haven't we given you everything you've asked for? Haven't we indulged your slightest whim? What more could you possibly want?"

Despite the image of childlike innocence projected by the pyjamas, there was nothing cute and adorable about Kame when he replied grimly, "I have to find someone."

"And what will you do when you find that person?"

"I haven't decided yet." The serious expression gave way to a sweet smile, and Jin's heart skipped a beat. "That depends on him."

Jin didn't dare hope that the person referred to was himself, though privately he thought he was the most likely candidate. He had no idea what he'd do if he came face-to-face with Kame right now.

It didn't look like the Fahngarlian was going to give him the chance to find out. She reached into the folds of her tunic and withdrew a syringe, seized Kame's arm and jabbed him before Jin could make a move.

Kame reeled back, sinking down onto the bed and cradling his arm. He glared up at his assailant, who said something Jin couldn't hear, and Kame's face changed. It was as if all the warm, human blood had been pumped from his body and replaced by molten lava.

"I said, I'll join you when I'm dressed," he snarled, batting the syringe out of the girl's hand. It clattered to the floor but didn't break, rolling out of sight. The Fahngarlian didn't retrieve it.

"That's right," she encouraged him. "Give voice to your anger. Why would you want to go elsewhere when here, with us, you have the means to take your revenge on all those who hurt you?"

She reached out with black-gloved hands, aiming for his face, but he backhanded her and sent her careening towards the door. She looked surprisingly happy at his display of temper...right up until Kame grabbed the lower half of her headset and broke it off.

"Always the same," he snapped. "If you don't have anything new to say, get out."

Clutching her damaged headset, the alien backed out the door, keeping a wary eye on Kame. He waited until the doors slid shut, then tapped a short code sequence on the lock before turning towards the closet.

Too late, Jin recalled that Kame had announced his intention to dress. Logically, that meant he was going to want clothes. Cute though the fuzzy pyjamas were, they were hardly suitable for the bridge of a warship. Jin could either climb back in the access shaft, call Nakamaru to beam him out, or wait for Kame to open the door and discover his former lover lurking in the closet.

None of the options were all that appealing, so Jin opted to surprise Kame instead. The current Kame was an angry brute, not at all the kind, funny partner who used to make him laugh - Jin kept one hand on his stunner, just in case. Whatever drug the aliens had been administering, they'd evidently been doing so for some time, if the Ohmiya report was any indication. Something to agitate Kame, to make him hostile enough to want to wipe out his own people?

There was no time left to think about it. Jin opened the door and leapt out of the closet, narrowly avoiding tripping over a pair of moonboots, and watched Kame's face transform from enraged to confused.

"Who...?" he muttered.

Jin realised he was still wearing his camouflage, and quickly divested himself of his borrowed clothing. "Sorry," he babbled, "I tried not to make a mess of your closet but there's so much stuff in there and I didn't want anyone to see me so-mph!"

He lost the end of his sentence when Kame grabbed a fistful of his long black coat and pushed him up against the wall, and suddenly it was like the early days of their partnership, when both of them were suspicious of each other and neither wanted to give an inch for fear the other would take a mile. Or, more importantly for men who made a living from piracy, take the money. Once they'd got to know each other better and put together a crew they could really trust, that suspicion had evaporated.

"Jin?" Kame said incredulously. "What are you doing in my closet?"

Jin would've felt a lot better about answering if Kame hadn't still looked so angry. He figured it was safer to leave all mention of the military out of it for the time being, try make it personal. "I came here to find you."

"How did you know I was here?"

"That's not important right now. Will you come back with me? Please? I don't know what that girl was injecting you with but I'm sure it can't be good for you."

Kame laughed harshly and released his hold on Jin's coat, letting the fabric slip through his fingers and fall loose. "Because I'm more irritable than I used to be? I don't need you to worry about me, Jin."

Jin pointed to the needle marks decorating Kame's arms. One of his ex-roommates had been a heroin addict, shooting up whenever he had enough cash for it, and he'd been in a similar state. In the brighter light, there was an unhealthy cast to Kame's skin. "Obviously you need somebody to worry about you."

"And that somebody is you, huh?" Kame cast his eyes down to the floor. "Even after I left?"

That was enough to crack Jin's heart all over again. "Yeah," he said thickly. "I couldn't get rid of my feelings. All I could do was bury them for a while, until I saw you again."

It was nothing more or less than the truth, though he hadn't realised it until now.

Some of the tension left Kame's face. "You flew all the way out here to tell me that?"

Jin shrugged and attempted a smile. "I thought we needed to talk."

The other man stepped back, shaking his head. "I don't believe this."

"I don't care if you believe it or not, just come with me," Jin pleaded. He was conscious that the Fahngarlians would be expecting Kame on the bridge, and when he didn't show up, they were bound to send someone to fetch him. They didn't have the time to hedge around the issue. "We can work out the details later."

Kame took several deep breaths, as if he were still trying to wrestle his rage into submission. "You really came to find me," he murmured.

"We've already established that."

Jin started to reach for his sleeve to remove the spare teleport bracelet, but Kame slipped behind him and got there first, running one hand lightly over Jin's arm, up to his shoulder where it rested, fingers squeezing gently inside the coat's voluminous collar. Pressure, butterfly-light, a caress Jin hadn't felt for far too long. He stood stock-still, not daring to move, caution warring with desire to see what happened next.

The fingers left his neck to brush aside the shoulder-length curtain of hair, tucking it out the way to make room for the lips that lingered teasingly close to his skin. Jin sighed deeply as the warmth of Kame's mouth descended on his pulse point, and allowed sentiment to overrule common sense. His eyelids fluttered closed and he gave himself up to sensation.

Unfortunately, that sensation happened to be the burning of a shockstick against his collarbone.

\-----

Not for the first time since he'd met Kame, Jin woke up with a splitting headache, along with other, equally unpleasant sensations. White-hot fire where the shockstick had connected with his skin, for one, and pain in his wrists and ankles where the bindings were digging in. He looked down at his arms to find he'd been tied, quite thoroughly, to an uncomfortable and old-fashioned wooden chair.

With ties.

Silk ties.

Kame's silk ties.

Jin muttered a curse under his breath and vowed to get his own back the moment he was free. He knew he should've stunned Kame when he had the chance. His stunner was gone, now, as was his trusty blaster, and he'd be willing to bet that the knife hidden in his right boot had pulled a vanishing act too.

There was one ray of hope, however. Though he couldn't see them beneath his coat sleeves, Jin could still feel the teleport bracelets adorning both wrists. Evidently, Kame hadn't considered them to be anything other than normal jewellery.

Or perhaps he hadn't been worried that Jin would use them to escape. After all, if he couldn't reach his comm badge he couldn't call Nakamaru to teleport him out, and the pilot was under orders not to initiate contact himself.

"I heard that," came a voice from behind him, and Jin struggled to turn his head far enough to see.

"Kame?"

"Who else?"

While Jin was unconscious, Kame hadn't been idle. The fuzzy yellow pyjamas were gone, replaced by a modified version of the Fahngalian uniform. The tunic was still blue, but a darker shade and shorter of sleeve, and the high collar was unbuttoned close to halfway down the chest. He'd dispensed with the gloves.

"Hurry up and untie me!"

Kame strode round so he was facing Jin and perched on the edge of the bed. "Why would I go to all the trouble of knocking you out if I was just going to let you go, idiot?"

"That's right, I'm an idiot," Jin said bitterly. "An idiot for taking this stupid mission in the first place!"

"Mission? I knew you weren't here for me. Maybe now you'll finally stop lying."

Jin was baffled. "When did I ever lie to you? I mean, except the time I accidentally broke your turtle alarm clock by knocking it off the nightstand and I told you I was asleep when it happened, but other than that?"

His captor picked up the shockstick and twirled it like a baton. "I've turned the intensity down so you won't lose consciousness again," he said casually. "Though you might faint from the pain, of course..."

Jin didn't like this new, cruel side of Kame. "Threaten me all you want, but I don't know what you're talking about!"

The shockstick twirled perilously close to his neck. "You went straight, didn't you?"

"I wouldn't call it 'straight', exactly..." The stick brushed his skin and he winced in anticipation, but the power was off. "Me, Ueda and the others, we all joined the military, just like we talked about when Yamapi caught up to us. The president gave us a pardon."

Kame smirked. "Always 'Yamapi this' and 'Yamapi that'. You think I don't know the real reason you signed up?"

"There's no point in piracy if you can't make a profit, right? There was nothing out there for us, not anymore, and your new friends here were making life awkward for anyone who flew out too far. That's why we joined." _And I needed something to distract me after you left,_ was the part Jin didn't add.

"You joined because you and your precious captain were still seeing each other behind my back."

"He's a commodore now," Jin correctly him, absently, then realised what he'd been accused of. "You really think that? C'mon, Kame, it was over before I even met you! Pi and I are just friends now."

"Such good friends that after half an hour alone with him, you changed your mind completely and stopped wanting to run. You'd have done anything he told you to."

"You knew about that meeting?" Jin struggled against his bonds, trying desperately to break free so he could knock some sense into his former partner. "All we did was talk. But I walked in there thinking that maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be on the right side of the law for a change, and if I hadn't been, nothing he could've said or done would've convinced me."

"Where one idiot goes, the other follows like a lovesick puppy. Were you thinking about him the whole time you were with me, or just during the day?"

Between the residual trauma from the shockstick and Kame's unexpected accusation, Jin's head was spinning. There was also an uncomfortable chill in his stomach, like he was going to throw up, and he hoped like hell that Kame would untie him before then. He wouldn't have put money on it, though.

He tried another tack. "You think anybody lucky enough to have you would waste his time even looking at anyone else?" he purred, and was proud when it came out sounding seductive despite the pain.

"Well..." Kame's expression softened. Marginally.

"You know you're the only one for me, right? There hasn't been anyone since you left, either." Jin cocked his head at a particularly winsome angle and offered Kame a smile so sizzling you could've cooked a steak on it. "I looked for you everywhere, but the first real lead I got was from military intelligence three days ago. I had to take this mission so I could see you again."

Kame's body language had relaxed during Jin's speech, but it tightened back up again and the unfortunate captain knew he'd said the wrong thing.

"See me? You came here to kill me." Kame held up Jin's weapons. "Not that I can blame you for wanting me dead. I've probably been responsible for the deaths of thousands of your fellow soldiers...and I'm going to be responsible for millions more."

"Not just soldiers - civilians too," Jin growled. "If you know what you're doing, Kame, then why don't you stop? They're your people too!"

"Not anymore." There was an odd, detached quality to Kame's voice that Jin hadn't heard before. "They're your people, and they're all going to pay for your betrayal. The Fahngarlians are helping me see to that."

"I don't believe this. You're going to wipe out the entire human race because you think I cheated on you?" As the implications sank in, Jin collapsed in helpless giggles, laughing until the tears ran down his cheeks and he sagged against the hard back of the chair. The situation couldn't possibly get any worse. "Admiral Takki is going to kill me!"

"Not if I get there first."

While Jin tried to recover what little composure remained to him, Kame received an impatient-sounding call from the bridge, strongly suggesting that he get moving. He frowned, barked a reply, then turned to Jin. "You're a mess," he commented.

"So untie me and I'll clean myself up," Jin sulked.

"Maybe later." Kame strapped a sidearm to his thigh and headed for the door, eyes gleaming with a hint of madness. "I have to go capture some shipyards. Don't go anywhere."

"Like I could get up and walk out," Jin muttered as Kame left the room.

There was more at stake than just sorting out his complicated personal life. The bulk of the JE fleet was divided between Earth and Mars; with the Fahngarlians stationing themselves near Jupiter, President Tsubasa was worried - and rightly so - that Mars would be a target. Without the vast shipbuilding facilities that spanned a quarter of the red planet's surface, the inhabitants of the Sol System would have no way to replenish their numbers. They supplied civilian ships also, but since the start of the war, the new crafts built were exclusively military. Most of the independent shipyards still catered to civilian customers, but they were small and scattered, and would never be able to compensate.

Whatever else happened, Jin had to get a message back to Yamapi to warn them to prepare for an attack. Kame had said "capture", not "destroy", which meant he wasn't going to risk damaging the facilities themselves. That didn't mean he wouldn't kill everyone in them.

The Pin was too far away for Jin to contact her directly, but if he could contact Nakamaru, the pilot could pass on the message via the AT-TUN.

Of course, first he had to reach his comm badge.

Jin contemplated his bonds. Despite his best efforts, the fabric refused to give, and he only succeeded in chafing his skin further. Kame had a *lot* to answer for, he decided. Though flexible enough to reach the knots with his teeth, he couldn't do anything with them. He needed something sharper.

Something like the teleport bracelet, which, like almost everything MatsuJun designed, had a deadly hidden feature. The upper half of the outward-facing edge was mildly serrated, not enough to cut but more than sufficient to irritate if the wearer allowed it to dangle too close to the hand. A small, flower-shaped button on the upper surface, when held down for sixteen seconds, released and held for sixteen more, activated the edge's vibraknife function.

Jin bent down again, took hold of his coat sleeve with his teeth, and tugged until the bracelet slipped clear of the material. He raised his arm as much as he could to make the thin silver bangle fall against the tie - the less manoeuvring he had to do with his mouth, the smaller the risk of cutting himself. Now for the hard part. He used his tongue to press down on the button, mentally counting the required time. There was a soft whine and a judder against his skin, and the vibraknife came alive.

It wasn't nearly as easy as the old adventure holovids made it look. The heroes always freed themselves in seconds, escaping without so much as a scratch and making it off the burning ship just in time to save the captured princess and restore peace to the universe.

Akanishi Jin wasn't so lucky. He cut his wrist twice, and by the time he managed to untie the knots holding his other arm in place, the blood was dripping freely. He quickly untied his legs and rooted around in the medkit he'd spotted in the closet, coming up with an all-in-one antiseptic, bandage and sim-skin package. He applied the fix to his cuts, wincing as the cold liquid hit, then checked his pockets.

Thankfully, Kame hadn't found the comm badge. Jin had known it was a bright idea to pin it to the *inside* of his shirt pocket, even if the rest of the crew thought it was silly.

He touched his hand to the bulldog pin. "Nakamaru?" he said breathlessly.

"Captain? Are you all right? Have you got him?" The pilot sounded relieved.

"Yes it's me, I'm not really sure, and no I haven't. Listen, I need you to call the AT-TUN and have Taguchi relay a message for me to Commodore Yamashita. The Fahngarlian fleet is headed for Mars."

"They've been moving for a while now; I've been reporting back while I was waiting for you. Don't worry - I've been keeping up with them so you're still in teleport range. Did you at least find Kame?"

"Yes, and he knocked me out," Jin said miserably. "He's going to help the Fahngarlians capture the shipyards."

"How?"

"He didn't tell me that part."

"Do you want me to bring you back, Captain?"

The ship gave a sickening lurch, causing Jin's stomach to do the same thing. They were speeding up.

"Not yet. I'll call you when it's time. Kame's on the bridge; I can still get to him."

"You don't think they'll see you walking in and shoot to kill, then?"

Jin thought about the random assortment of clothing, make-up and accessories in Kame's closet, including a light blue, full-sleeved tunic and a long, black wig, and allowed himself a grin. "They'll never notice as long as I don't try to speak."


	3. Chapter 3

Five minutes later, Jin was craftily disguised as a Fahngarlian. The long sleeves covered his teleport bracelets; Kame had taken the blaster and shockstick with him but left the stunner, and Jin hooked it underneath the trailing tunic. Regrettably, he had to leave his coat behind, though he consoled himself with the fact that it was now horribly stained with blood, sweat and tears anyway.

He used the access shaft to reach the middle deck, emerging in a deserted rec room. From the looks of the furnishings, the place was used for sparring practice. Jin repressed a shudder and continued on his way, ducking down odd corridors to avoid Fahngarlians and the random chairs - some with a bow tied on the back - that littered the ship. As the only "girl" on board without a headset, he was bound to draw attention to himself if anyone got too close.

Just as Jin approached the bridge doors, a trio of aliens arrived from the opposite corridor and he fell into step behind them, keeping his head down so the wig hid most of his face - and lack of headset. They didn't seem to notice. The leader was chattering excitedly about something, and the other two were gazing at her with such rapt admiration that Jin was surprised they hadn't crashed into a wall yet.

The chatter continued even as they marched through the doors, though one of the followers broke off to take up a position at a station near the back. No one turned to look at them, intent as they were on their own work.

As with the AT-TUN, a large viewscreen took up the majority of one wall. The display was set to external, showing Mars growing clearer and clearer as the Fahngarlian fleet neared its destination. The captain, easily identifiable by virtue of her purple tunic, was bent over a smaller screen on the left, jabbing at it with gloved fingers. Jin couldn't follow her speech but she didn't seem happy.

Kame wasn't happy either, he noted. His erstwhile captor was seated on a raised couch set into the floor near the back, not ten feet away from him. Legs crossed, arms folded, murderous glare firmly in place - no wonder he was sitting by himself. He broke his sullen silence every so often to yell at the screen, prompting the Fahngarlians to give each other wary looks.

Standing in comfortable anonymity behind a pair of them, Jin was gloating on the inside. It was apparent even to him that the aliens were getting annoyed by the effect their drug was having on their big-shot tactical advisor. In fact, he was almost starting to feel sorry for them. Living with Kame on a day-to-day basis could be a trial at the best of times, but after seven months of rage-increasing injections...it was just too ghastly to contemplate.

Even the captain was fed up. "You're supposed to be helping us," she complained to Kame, her Japanese barely-accented. "We don't have time for you to have another one of your temper tantrums. We'll be in range soon!"

"I can see that for myself," he said carelessly.

"Then perhaps you'll be willing to share your plan with the rest of us, if you're not too busy being self-important."

Alien sarcasm translated fairly well into Japanese, Jin thought. Not up to Ryo-chan's standards, but few were able to match the JE ambassador's caustic tongue and fewer still lived to tell the tale.

"I don't think he's going to tell us what he's got in mind," another Fahngarlian remarked. Jin wasn't sure, but he thought it was the one who'd injected Kame earlier, and she confirmed it when she spoke again. "He's going to leave us, he told me himself."

The captain watched Kame for a response; none was forthcoming. "And where does he think he's going to go? Back to the very people who betrayed him?"

Fury bubbled up inside Jin. No matter what Kame thought, he hadn't betrayed him, and he certainly hadn't given him cause to declare war on his own species in revenge. Even accounting for the effects of the drug, those feelings had to come from somewhere and the idea that Kame was capable of being so cold and merciless...that scared the life out of him.

"It's none of your business where I go," Kame insisted. "You took me in when I was half-dead and I'm grateful for that, but I've more than paid my debt to you." Something caught his eye on the screen and he stood up abruptly. "Magnify the lower left corner," he commanded.

The view suddenly changed and there was a collective gasp from the occupants of the bridge. Jin strained to see what all the fuss was about, eventually spotting a cluster of white and grey dots emerging from behind the planet. The dot in the lead was neither grey nor white, but bright, shocking pink.

The JE fleet had arrived.

Captain Jennifer let loose with a flood of angry-sounding words in her own language, and after two minutes of this Jin was pretty sure he'd just learned to curse in Fahngarlese. He'd have to teach Pi a few words when he got back.

The captain switched to Japanese, drew a weapon from her belt and turned on her tactical advisor. "You really will turn traitor on *anyone*, won't you," she snarled. "First your fellow humans, now us. You never had a plan for taking the shipyards intact, that was all a ploy to lead us into an ambush!"

Kame seemed genuinely alarmed. "I didn't-"

"Silence!"

A pair of menacing-looking crew members stepped up on either side of Kame, reminding Jin of the time the two of them had been thrown out of a nightclub on Venus for not conforming to the dress-code. They'd laughed about it afterwards, but how were they supposed to know the club didn't allow wrap-around skirts and random tartan fragments?

At least if Kame got shot by his own side, it would solve most of Jin's problems. He could have Nakamaru teleport him back with a clear conscience, knowing the aliens had lost their advantage and, providing he'd recovered from his hangover, Yamapi and the fleet would have no problem securing a victory. They'd have support from the base on Mars as well, and between them, they could wipe out the majority of the Fahngarlian fleet. Jin could go home and fall into a bottle of something cold till he forgot why he'd accepted the stupid mission in the first place, then wake up and try to get on with his life.

But even if he couldn't escape from a chair like a hero, he couldn't leave Kame to die like a coward.

Jin edged closer to his ex-partner, sidling cautiously around the aliens he'd been using for cover. Although his stunner was still at full charge, there was no way he could drop everyone in the room before getting shot, and it wouldn't be with something as harmless as a stunner. In fact, the only person he could probably hit safely was Kame himself.

The copper-haired man was paying no attention to his newly-acquired guards, or even to the irate captain. He muttered to himself, protests that he did have a plan, and no, he hadn't told anybody that they were going to Mars, except...

Jin knew the instant the realisation hit. Kame hadn't told anyone but Jin, and to the best of his knowledge, Jin was still tied to a chair in his quarters, waiting for his return.

Kame's eyes lit up. Ignoring the weapons pointed at him, he made a dash for the door.

At the same time, Jin made a dash for Kame. He was holding his stunner in one hand and a teleport bracelet in the other, having only the vaguest idea of what he was doing but knowing he had to do it fast.

He'd forgotten about his disguise. Not only did no one try to shoot him, they actually thought he was trying to stop Kame from leaving and helpfully stepped aside. The unarmed ones, at any rate.

His path blocked, Kame stopped dead in his tracks, and Jin prepared to stun him. If he shot Kame first, he could bend over the body, slip the bracelet on and hastily call Nakamaru to get them the hell out of there.

Unfortunately, the drug in Kame's system chose that moment to go into overdrive.

With a psychotic gleam in his eyes that would've done Captain Shibutani proud, he whirled round, snatched up a weapon from his belt - Jin's stolen blaster - and opened fire on everyone who happened to be standing on the wrong side of him.

At least, that's what he was aiming for. When the burning red bolts failed to emerge, he screamed in wordless frustration and used the gun to sweep away the aliens closest to him.

All of which made it that much easier for Jin to sneak up behind him and tap him on the shoulder. "The trigger's gene-locked," he murmured, for Kame's ears alone. "That weapon only responds to me. I'll be taking it back, thanks."

The psychotic gleam gave way to confusion as, for the second time that day, Kame found himself confronted by a disguised Jin. He didn't even manage the first syllable of his question before the full force of a stunner on the highest setting stole his consciousness. His fingers relaxed as he slumped bonelessly to the floor, and the stolen gun fell right along with him.

Jin bent low and jammed the bracelet over Kame's wrist, not caring if he accidentally took off a layer of skin. He didn't plan on waiting around for the Fahngarlians to figure out he wasn't one of them - no time for niceties. He picked up his blaster in one hand and touched the other to his comm badge, yelling for Nakamaru to teleport them.

As the first shots grazed his borrowed hairpiece, Jin's world shimmered around him and vanished.

\-------

The trip home had been relatively peaceful. Kame remained unconscious for the entire journey, allowing Jin to ignore the messy problem of how to deal with him when he woke up, and Nakamaru was too preoccupied with listening to the reports of the battle to even think about beatboxing.

As for Captain Akanishi Jin...he fell asleep. Not even the thrilling news about the JE fleet's victory at Mars could keep him awake. Saving the entire human race was an exhausting business.

Back on the AT-TUN, things soon got complicated. An enraged Kame had to be locked up and occasionally knocked out when he hurt himself trying to break out of the brig. Jin delegated this unpleasant task to Koki, who soothed him with pictures of puppies then hit him with a sedative when he wasn't looking.

"I wish you'd been able to get a sample of that drug they used on him," Ueda commented as he and Jin sat in the antechamber and watched Kame sleep through a mirror. "We could have sent it off to Arashi for analysis."

"I already tried contacting them for help," Jin said glumly. "They're busy."

"All five of them?"

"Yeah. I keep getting a 'do not disturb' message no matter which one of them I call."

"They must be working on something top secret," Ueda decided.

"Uh...yeah. Top secret, right." Jin didn't tell his second-in-command that 'do not disturb' hadn't been the exact wording of the message - it was more along the lines of 'if the space station's rocking, don't come a'knocking'. At least somebody in the universe was happy.

Sensing his captain's melancholy, Ueda suggested Jin teleport across to the Pin. The AT-TUN had rejoined the fleet after the 'Martian Massacre', as the holovid reporters were calling it, and Commodore Yamashita's flagship was once more within easy reach.

The only JE ship still fighting was the multicoloured K8, whose crew had been incensed by receiving a taunt consisting of a map of Japan with Osaka obliterated by a Fahngarlian attack. Never mind that the aliens had never attacked Earth directly, nor were they ever going to have the chance to - the insult could not be borne, and so the K8 was on a mission to track down every last alien ship and remove them from the known universe in as painful and final a way as possible.

"Nah. Pi's got a lot to deal with, mopping up after the battle. I shouldn't disturb him."

Ueda didn't press the issue, for which Jin was grateful. He'd barely spoken to his best friend since he'd been back, using Kame as an excuse, because he didn't know what to tell him. "By the way, Kame flipped out and tried to kill us all because he thought we were having an affair" didn't seem like much of an explanation.

He didn't even notice when Ueda silently got to his feet and walked out, leaving Jin alone in the antechamber. Watching Kame sleep was fairly boring, as entertainment went, but somebody had to keep an eye on him as long as he was still detoxing. It couldn't go on forever, right? There had been a moment, back on the Fahngarlian ship, where he'd been his sweetly-smiling self, and Jin hoped desperately that he could find that person again, somewhere under the layers of anger and bitter, twisted jealousy.

The speaker at his elbow stammered to life; a small, plaintive voice saying "Hello?"

Jin had been so busy thinking about Kame that he'd forgotten to actually watch him. He looked through the mirror and saw the other man stumble out of bed, pushing the heavy quilt aside with noticeable difficulty.

Kamenashi Kazuya, ex-space pirate, former tactical advisor and occasional traitor, was a mess. Bouts of violent rage had sapped his strength, leaving him bruised and exhausted, hair plastered to his scalp by sweat. The plain black tracksuit that covered the needle marks on his arms only served to emphasise the heavy bags under his eyes. Hands that had once worked Jin's body with steady, sure fingers now trembled, opening and closing of their own accord.

But the anger was gone.

In his excitement, Jin ignored the command he'd issued himself - that no one should enter the brig without backup while Kame was residing there - and rushed to the door. He tapped out the first three digits of the lock code, then hesitated with his finger held over the fourth. What in the world was he going to say?

"Jin?"

The voice came over the speaker again, and Jin jabbed the last digit before he could change his mind. The door slid open and he stepped through, letting it close behind him.

"I knew you were out there," Kame said, sounding weary but self-satisfied. "You always did like to watch me sleep."

"I liked to do a lot of things involving you," Jin said quietly. He held himself aloof, keeping the length of the room between them.

"Past tense?"

"I'm not the one that walked out and declared war on my own people," Jin retorted, and immediately regretted it.

"That wasn't my idea." Kame sighed heavily and sank back onto the bed. He patted the space next to him. "Sit. I'm not going to attack you again."

"That's exactly the sort of thing you'd say if you *were* going to attack me," Jin pointed out, but found himself obeying anyway. He perched on the very edge of the bed, keeping one hand poised near his stunner and the other ready to hit his comm badge if he needed to call for help.

"You don't need to stun me again."

"Prove it."

Kame stripped off his top, leaned back against the pillows and spread his arms wide. "I know you still carry a knife on you, Jin. Use it. I won't stop you. Someone's going to have to punish me for what I've done and it might as well be you."

Jin shook his head. He felt sick again, sicker than Kame looked. "You cut my heart out, now you want me to do the same to you? How's that going to solve anything?"

"But-"

"But nothing! Maybe you'll be sent to prison, maybe you'll be executed, I don't know. Extenuating circumstances, maybe you'll be lucky. But if there's an executioner in your future it's not going to be me."

"Jin."

"What?"

"Look at me."

Jin looked, blinking away mist. Kame appeared absolutely calm, tremors notwithstanding. He sat in total serenity, chest bare, his heart exposed.

"Do you know how many deaths I was responsible for, Jin? Do you have any idea? Because I can't remember now. I would've killed my friends, my family...my entire race. All because I hated you."

"Do you still hate me now?" Jin asked. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.

Kame smiled at him. "I'm not sure I even hated you then. I only thought I did."

Jin allowed himself to relax a little, letting his hands rest on his thighs. "Kame, the Fahngarlians...how did they get hold of you?"

"It wasn't quite like that." Kame tugged the quilt round his bare shoulders, leaving the sweat-soaked black top lying on the floor. "Do you remember the night I left?"

"Yeah." Jin rubbed his head. "You slipped me something. I woke up next morning feeling like Ueda had been using my head for a punchbag."

Kame's smile turned into a full-on grin. "Sorry about that. Couldn't have you waking up when I left the bed, could I? Even you might've been suspicious if I'd said I was going to the bathroom carrying a pair of suitcases."

"Hey!"

The grin faded. "I flew the shuttle to Deimos Central, sold it and took the first passenger flight out to Titan. I figured you'd be looking for the shuttle, even if you weren't concerned with finding me."

"Other way round."

Kame shrugged. "Well, I wasn't thinking straight at the time. I had a couple of fake IDs I'd never used, ones you didn't know about, and more than enough money to get me anywhere I wanted to go. Since the only thing I wanted to do was forget you ever existed, where else was I going to go?"

Jin nodded in perfect understanding. "Dialogues."

'Dialogues' was a bar on the orbital colony of Atlantis, circling Pluto and making it the most distant watering-hole in the Sol System - usually. There was a an excellent tavern on Neptune that occasionally had the honour. Even before the war, most space traffic in the Sol System was interplanetary, so the outermost settlements didn't see much in the way of business. Consequently, the law had even less meaning than usual out there, and anyone caught trying to enforce it could count on not waking up the next morning.

It was a natural haven for pirates. The bartenders didn't talk, the waitresses didn't complain and the drinks didn't inspire a closer look at the bottles. Ironically, nobody went to Dialogues to engage in conversation. They went to drink as much as they could, for as long as they could, and if their bodies gave out mid-swallow they spluttered and died without anyone caring.

"I must've been there for two weeks, maybe more, when a group of dark-haired women showed up," Kame continued. "Fahngarlians, but I didn't know that then. Nobody had ever seen one before. I was so out of it I hardly noticed they were there until one of them came over to my booth and sat down."

"Trust you to get picked up by an alien."

"Nobody else would've wanted me, not in that state." Kame took a sip of water from the plastic bottle on the shelf next to the bed. "She'd been drawing pictures to communicate with the bar staff - not unusual, given the mix of languages out there - and they'd directed her to me. I managed to figure out from her drawings that she wanted maps of the inner planets - her ship had been damaged by a meteor and the navicomp had lost the lot, back-ups included."

"You fell for that story? Because it sounds pretty suspicious to me."

"I didn't have a sober cell in my body at the time. I'd have believed anything." He gulped down the rest of the water and set the empty bottle aside. "They don't carry that kind of detail on Atlantis, and what they do have is out of date. They're too far away to bother with anything closer to the sun than Uranus. The bartender knew I'd been born on Earth, figured I might be able to help."

"How?" Jin asked. "You'd already sold the shuttle, right? You don't carry round a map of every city on Earth in your head, either."

Kame winked impishly. "Just because I'd left you didn't mean I'd renounced my career. I wasn't the only person from the inner planets hanging around Atlantis that week, and one of those flashy racers from Venus was docked at the station on his way out of the system. I'd already run into him once and he didn't seem like the sort of person who'd be willing to share his information with anyone who wasn't like him. So while he was bedding down in his fancy hotel room, I let myself into his ship, convinced his security system that I had every right to be there, and copied everything he had. Oh, and I might've accidentally moved his carefully arranged trophies out of alignment."

"Well, you were very drunk," Jin said, smothering a giggle.

"It really was an accident. A fortnight of doing nothing much but binge-drinking didn't help my coordination any, and when I made it back to the ship of my new acquaintances with the data, I collapsed. I'd agreed to help because it was a good distraction, but I hadn't planned on going with them. When I woke up in their sickbay, however, we were halfway to Neptune and moving rapidly inwards. My collapse alarmed them and since they couldn't think of anything better to do with me, they took me with them."

"That must've been fun, with you not being able to speak the language," Jin opined sarcastically.

"You know I said I copied everything the racer had? That included his language databases. By the time I'd dried out enough to speak, the med team had used them to rig those headsets you probably saw. Made it a lot easier for me to tell them where it hurt." Kame lowered his eyes, refused to look at him. "They fixed up everything else...just not my heart."

Jin wanted to reach out, take Kame's hand the way he'd done a million times before, lock their fingers together so tightly that neither of them would ever feel alone again. But that took trust, and what little of it remained was fragile and brittle, ready to snap with one word, one look.

"I assumed they were an all-female tour group who wanted maps for the major attractions on the inner planets," Kame said lightly, as though the last few moments of their lives had been erased. "It wasn't until they started letting me sit in on their "war games" that I realised they weren't human."

"War games?" Kame had always been good at Risk, Jin recalled.

"Not like you're thinking. They were using the maps to come up with potential targets, looking at military and important political locations and discussing how best to take down the heart of humanity in the Sol System - Earth. I thought it was a game for them, a way to pass the travel time, especially when they invited me to play. They were pumping me for ship specifications and I didn't even notice. I devised weird strategies because I thought we were playing, and they liked them."

"Like the glitter in the ventilation systems? That was nasty, Kame. I couldn't look at some of my shinier shirts for weeks afterwards."

There was no malice in Jin's comment, only gentle humour, but the other man reacted as if he'd been slapped, curling in on himself and pulling the quilt protectively up round his chin. Jin knew what the human cost of that particular attack had been, and reminding Kame of it wouldn't help.

"Sorry, that was a bad joke."

"Not as bad as Taguchi's," Kame said. It was obvious he was starting to flag now.

"We can take a break," Jin offered. "You need to rest." _Because almost destroying the human race was just as exhausting as saving it._

Kame shook his head. "I have to finish this now. It's..." he searched for the right word, "...mortifying."

This time, Jin did reach for Kame, only to find Kame was reaching for him too. Fingers met and tangled clumsily under the quilt, dancing around each other then clawing, clutching in painful intensity.

"Thanks," Kame said awkwardly, and it seemed to help. "So, where was I? War games. I was still miserable, and complaining about you every chance I got didn't get me anywhere, even with a hundred sympathetic listeners. They didn't really understand men - I was a novelty to them, but I didn't know why until they started showing me pictures of Fahngarl. No men, not for hundreds of years. They reproduce through cloning now."

"What happened to all the men?" Jin asked, sympathetic despite himself.

"We did. One of the first Earth scout ships to make it to Andromeda crashlanded on their planet. It's much smaller than Earth, and most of it is ocean. The eco-system is very delicately balanced. Or it was, until the ship hit. They were carrying specimens picked up along the way, and when the hull cracked open and everything spilled out to contaminate the planet, some of them proved to be fatal to anyone with a Y-chromosome. The ship's crew died on impact, and within a week there wasn't a male alive on Fahngarl.

"The Fahngarlians were just as angry as I was, and they'd had centuries to nurture those feelings. Their people were dying because the clones were becoming weaker with each generation, and there were no suitable races they could breed with. Except humans, and they'd rather have died. They were far too proud to ask for help, especially from the species responsible for their situation."

"Sounds familiar," Jin muttered under his breath.

"Their leaders decided that if they were going down, they were going to take humans with them. All they thought about was vengeance. I got caught up with their feelings, hating you and Yamapi and anyone else I'd ever met because it felt like the entire universe was against me. Maybe I didn't think they'd really go through with it, I don't know. I almost never saw the results of my "tactical advice". I knew what humans were like, I knew how they acted and what they needed, so they used me for their revenge and encouraged me to see it as my own."

"And the drug?"

"That," Kame coloured slightly, "was what they gave me whenever I showed signs of remorse, or wanting to leave. It's the same thing they inject themselves with to correct hormonal imbalances - I think it's mostly testosterone. It made me horribly irritable, and," the blush deepened, "they kept shaving my legs, Jin."

"Not on *this* ship!" Jin vowed.

Without warning the door slid open, making both men jump, and Ueda entered, wearing a carefully neutral expression and carrying a slip of paper. He handed the latter to Jin, stared hard at the quilt where their joined hands disappeared under it, then turned and walked out.

Jin palmed the paper at an angle so Kame couldn't read it. The message read, "Jin, you idiot. Stop avoiding me. I'm teleporting across in five minutes so you'd better not be busy. Ensign Uchi is packing us a late lunch and we're going to talk while we eat."

"Uh, Kame," he began, "Commodore Yamashita is about to pay us a visit. You might want to put a shirt on."

Kame groaned. "Now I'm going to have to tell the whole story again."

"Actually..." Jin pointed to the wall microphone Kame had used earlier. "That's been recording the entire time you've been here."

"You recorded everything? Even when I was asleep?" Kame sounded incredulous.

Jin opted not to tell him about the hidden comm links all over the ship - especially not the ones in the showers. "Welcome to the AT-TUN!" he said brightly.

"That's what this ship's called? I don't even know what class it is!"

Pride swelled in Jin's heart as he replied, "A Jaguar."

"A Jaguar?" Kame scoffed. "What *idiot* put you in charge of a Jaguar?"

At that moment, there was a flash of light and Yamapi appeared, staggering under the weight of a giant, pink, heart-shaped bento box. He looked puzzled to see Kame, who was muttering, "I should've known", to himself.

"That wasn't five minutes!" Jin protested.

The commodore set the oversized lunch down with a sigh of relief. "It was five minutes in my time," he said.

"Don't act like we live in two different timestreams, Pi."

Kame doubled over with laughter, finally releasing Jin's hand. "You guys never change, do you?" he gasped out.

It took five minutes for everyone to calm down, and a further forty-five minutes for them to work their way through the mounds of food. Kame ate well but Jin didn't have much of an appetite. All he could think about was what would happen when they finished eating. Yamapi had said they were going to talk, but they hadn't, except in the most general of terms.

Not once had the commodore hinted at Kame's fate, and it was driving Jin crazy.

The explosion wasn't long in coming. "Enough already! Are you here to take Kame off to be executed or what?"

Yamapi threw the orange he was holding up in the air with one hand, caught it with the other, and smiled lazily at Jin. "I haven't had any orders like that."

Jin was torn between trying to strangle his best friend and hugging him to death. Admiral Takki would kill him for the former, and Kame would probably kill him for the latter. "Don't do things like that to me, *please*. I'm too young and handsome to go grey from stress."

"Sorry," Yamapi said, not sounding at all sincere. "I had to see for myself if Kamenashi was still..."

"A revenge-driven lunatic on hormones?" Jin suggested helpfully.

"...not himself," Yamapi finished.

"You've just had lunch with me. What do you think?"

"I think our intelligence division will probably be able to put forward enough evidence to exonerate you, based on your voluntary confession."

"You mean you've managed to get hold of Arashi? I thought they were busy..." Jin trailed off, fluffing the hair behind his ears to cover his embarrassment.

"Busy testing MatsuJun Version 3.0's latest cybernetic enhancements? They were, but apparently there are still a few bugs to work out. A few crossed wires, or something. I'm told they're all going to be bedridden for the next week - to, uh, recuperate."

Jin didn't want to picture this, though he was reassured when Yamapi added that they would be keeping in strictly voice-only contact with them.

"They'll all sound insufferably happy," he grumbled. "And what was that about a confession? Kame hasn't told you anything yet."

"No, but he told you, and the transmitter we have hidden in your recorder fed it through to the Pin. I knew bugging your ship would come in handy one day."

"You were recording us? You can't do that!" Jin screeched.

Yamapi smiled beatifically. "Welcome to the military, Captain Bakanishi!"

"Akanishi!"

Kame, who'd fallen half-asleep again by this point, mumbled, "Isn't that what he said?"

Jin promptly tipped his soda over both of them and walked off to pester Ueda.


	4. Epilogue

_**One year later...** _

On the bridge of the JE Fleet's newest Jaguar-class ship, the KAT-TUN, the two co-captains were taking a well-deserved break from their crew members. With the ship remaining docked on Venus for the next seven days, Captains Akanishi and Kamenashi had given every last man aboard a week of leave. They'd all taken it, heading for parts unknown with a promise to be back in more-or-less good time.

"This isn't fair," Jin grumbled. "What harm do they think you're going to do planet-side? You'd be more dangerous staying on the ship!" He promptly reeled off a list of high-powered weapons the KAT-TUN was fortunate enough to possess.

"Ssh," Kame hushed him. "I'm only under ship arrest for another year. I can handle it, don't worry."

As Commodore Yamashita had said, the Agency of Really Awesome, Smart and Handsome Individuals had managed to provide sufficient evidence that Kame had been a) coerced, b) under the influence of alien narcotics and c) tortured through forced leg shaving sessions, and thus not responsible for his actions. However, as reparation for the destruction and tragedy he'd helped to cause, Earth President Tsubasa had ruled that he had to remain on board the AT-TUN (shortly to be renamed KAT-TUN) for the duration of two years, with at least one other crew member present at all times. (It was originally going to be five years, but Admiral Takki talked him down on the grounds that Kame was likely to be insane by that point.)

"Yeah, but this is Venus: planet of love. Koki and the other guys are out there having fun and we're stuck here," Jin whined.

"You were the one who volunteered to stay with me."

Jin shone with pride when he answered, "Part of a captain's job is never to ask his crew to do something he wouldn't be prepared to do himself. Besides, now that Pi has *finally* removed all the hidden transmitters, I can relax again."

He demonstrated just how relaxed he was by dimming the lights and throwing himself down in the captain's chair with a contented sigh. The *left* captain's chair, that is. What with there being two of them now, they'd had to have an extra one installed.

There had been other changes, too. Jin had cleared out the spare cabin next to his that he used to keep as an overspill for his wardrobe, and for several weeks afterwards, deliveries kept arriving for the ship. Kame had decided, since he was going to be stuck on board for two years, he was going to have it redecorated to suit himself. He couldn't go any further outside than the viewing platform, which took care of his fresh air requirements whenever they were docked, but the interior was his to do as he pleased with. Jin said so.

Of course, Jin hadn't realised that Kame's redecorating project was going to include replacing so many of the chairs.

Kame, who was still standing, looked pointedly at Jin. "You're going to stay on the bridge all night? We're off-duty, you know. Station security guards are watching outside so we don't have to be."

"True." Jin reached for a button on the arm of his chair and switched off the viewscreen. The external view vanished, replaced by solid black, and it was something of a relief not to be able to see people outside, hurrying about their business. This way, it was like they were all alone in the universe, just he and Kame, on board their ship with no one to answer to.

"That wasn't quite what I was getting at."

Jin laughed. "No, but it's a start. Join me?"

"I suppose I could indulge you for a few minutes," Kame said lazily. He paused in front of his own chair and turned as if he was going to sit down, then eschewed it in favour of Jin's lap.

Jin was surprised but not unhappy to suddenly have his co-captain's weight resting on his legs. Since the start of Kame's confinement, not so much as an inappropriate look had passed between them, too much remaining unsaid. Apologies and explanations and "I missed you"s and "forgive me?"s...nothing. Kame's reason for leaving in the first place had been glossed over during the trial, and if anyone had ever told Yamapi he'd unwittingly contributed to Kame's attempted genocide, he'd certainly never mentioned it to Jin.

So they'd kept up the pretense, this play that things were back to normal and nothing was going to change. Separate rooms, separate lives, the connecting door stays locked and nobody strays in the night. Nobody asked why Jin had hollow eyes for weeks, remembering the feel of the shockstick against his skin and worrying that Kame would turn on him again. No one questioned Kame's aversion to needles and desire to avoid looking out at the universe where he'd caused so much trouble. The crew of the KAT-TUN got on with their lives, flying where they were told and making sure their captains stayed out of trouble.

The distance had been okay with Jin, at least at first. Considering what had happened on the Fahngarlian ship, he had every right to be wary.

But the longer he spent in the company of his former lover, the more frustrated he became. It was impossible to keep so close to Kamenashi Kazuya and not be affected by him, and Jin had never been good at resisting temptation.

Presented with a now healthy-if-not-entirely-happy Kame in his lap, Jin slipped his arms about the other man's waist and tugged gently, pulling him closer. "You know if you pick *this* chair, you'll be indulging me for more than a few minutes, right?" he murmured. "Or would you prefer the cold, empty seat next to me?"

Kame shifted his torso sideways and twisted his head round so that he could see Jin. "I like this seat just fine," he said clearly. To prove it, he leaned in and met Jin's lips with his own, rekindling the embers of the fire that had once blazed between them and never quite been extinguished. They were both a little older now, a little more bruised and abused by the world, and that made them all the more appreciative of each other.

Had Jin been more appreciative when getting dressed that morning, he'd have thought twice about wearing such uncomfortably tight trousers. They hadn't been tight when he put them on, but Kame was moving now, turning to give him better access to Jin's mouth, his throat, to anywhere he could kiss and receive Jin's soft moans in reply, and the pressure was becoming unbearable.

"You don't have to be so quiet, Jin - we're all alone on the ship, remember?" Kame said when he came up for air. "The only person who'll hear you is me, unless you think Yamapi lied about removing all the bugs?"

"Don't say things like that," Jin hissed. "You'll make me paranoid and I'll have to go check the entire ship for listening devices." The ones he hadn't planted himself, anyway. "And if I do that, you'll have to get up."

"Believe me," Kame said breathlessly, "getting up isn't going to be a problem."

Jin peered down, and even in the dim light, he could tell Kame wasn't lying. "This is going to be..."

"What? Fun?"

"Awkward," Jin decided. "You really pick your places, Kame. Has it just been a fantasy of yours to have sex in the captain's chair or something? I mean, I know you're fond of chairs, but-"

"But I've never been in love with a chair," Kame said sensibly, and swung himself off Jin's lap to turn round and straddle the other man so they were facing each other. "Better?"

Jin's brain switched off the second he heard the word 'love'. "Is what better?"

Kame sighed. "Never mind." He renewed his attack on Jin's lips, using his tongue to remind himself of all the subtle flavours that remained, untasted for over a year, in the back of his memory. He gasped against those full, perfect lips as Jin's hands worked their way up and under Kame's shirt, teasing and twisting and torturing him in indescribable ways.

"You're going to pop all my buttons if you keep that up," he managed to get out before a single finger trailed just so down his chest made him cry out.

"To hell with the buttons," Jin said. "Do you know how many shirts we've got on board? Hundreds. Possibly thousands. I'm not worried about mine."

"You've only got one button done up on yours," Kame pointed out. Still, it was a button in his way, so he unfastened it with care then proceeded to remove the shirt, throwing it behind him.

With the white silk no longer an obstacle, Kame went after his target - the exact spot on Jin's collarbone where he'd zapped him with the shockstick one year earlier. The spot was usually sensitive, and even more so now.

Jin's hands abandoned Kame and flew automatically to protect the sought-after patch of skin. Kame caught them mid-flight and placed a kiss on each palm, saying "Let me" before nuzzling Jin's hair. Through the dark brown strands he kissed his way down the side of Jin's face, down his throat and across to the place he thought he remembered. Jin squirmed at the ticklish sensations, but when Kame touched the once-burned, now-unmarred skin, he froze.

"It's all right," Kame soothed him. "I'm not going to hurt you. Look, no shockstick this time."

"I didn't see it last time either," Jin joked, hating the way his voice shook from the memory. He flinched as Kame leant down again to plant a feather-light kiss on the spot.

"Does it still hurt?" Kame asked curiously. "I've never been hit by a shockstick on full power before."

Jin shook his head, blinding the other man with a faceful of wavy hair. "It stopped hurting after a few days - physically, anyway. Just a bad memory, I guess."

"Then let me turn it into a good memory for you," Kame offered.

Thirty heartwrenching seconds passed and Kame held his breath, then Jin silently turned his head aside to allow him access. His face was closed off, jaws clenched tightly, and he looked like he was having to physically force his eyes to stay open.

By way of distraction, Kame quickly stripped out of his own shirt. Even as he rolled forwards, bringing their hips agonizingly close together, he felt Jin's fingers begin stroking a soft, complicated dance along his spine. The song was a simple one, step by gentle step against his skin, the rhythm always perfect.

His access granted, Kame bent to Jin's collarbone again, laying the lightest and most tender of kisses over the sensitive spot. Jin didn't respond, even in a negative fashion, so Kame tried again, this time lapping against it with slow circles of his tongue, and received a half-sob in response. He upped the ante once more, closing his mouth over the skin and sucking delicately at it, knowing his teeth were leaving small impressions and not caring that he'd once more be giving his lover a temporary brand.

This time, Jin actually screamed and bucked his hips, pressing desperately against Kame.

Kame detached himself. "I know I said we didn't have to be quiet, but I'm really quite fond of my hearing, Jin."

The other captain wasn't repentant in the slightest. "I'm fond of your hearing too," he gasped. "And your hair...and your eyes...and your lips..."

"And we're still going to be sitting here when the others get back if you continue like that."

Jin mock-scowled. "They can get their own seats. There's more than enough of them around here now."

"I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have an audience." Kame leaned back far enough that he could reach between them and unfasten them both, prompting a sigh of relief from Jin. Unsurprisingly, neither of them were wearing the regulation JE underwear, which the crew had unanimously decided was boring, and Jin's black briefs were only just this side of respectable.

"I'm going to stick to the leather," Jin complained as Kame attempted to divest him of the lower half of his outfit.

Kame rolled his eyes. "Fine. I just hope you're not too attached to these." He reached down, pulled the knife from Jin's right boot, and used it to cut away the tiny scraps of fabric that were the only thing keeping Jin in check.

"You make a point of not tearing off buttons but you're quite happy to slice up my underwear?"

"Would you rather have done it yourself?" Kame teased, and launched into a complex series of wriggles that ended with his own trousers tangled round his legs. Luckily, despite his shipboard confinement, he'd managed to get sufficient exercise to retain his natural athleticism and flexibility. Having that pole installed in the corner of his cabin had helped, too.

"With you sitting right there? I'd probably have cut myself by accident!" Jin's sentence ended on a yelp as Kame's wandering hands roamed lower and lower. "Especially when you do things like that!"

"Things like this?" Kame said innocently, stroking Jin with light, barely-there motions the way one would pet a small animal.

Jin's reply was non-verbal but definitely in the affirmative, urging Kame to apply more pressure *or else*. The other man's hands had lost none of their talent in the time they'd been apart, caressing him with a will, shaping and molding his flesh like a sculptor creating a piece of fine art.

It was as much as Jin could do to remember that Kame probably needed to be touched just as much as he did, that they had time to be everyone and everything to each other later but right now there was only the urgency, the heat of the moment that threatened to engulf them both in its flames. He reached out blindly for Kame, found him achingly hard and so agitated that even the slightest sensation made him jump.

"Your nails," Kame panted, and Jin hastily withdrew his fingers.

"Sorry!"

"Don't be sorry - do it again!"

Jin was only too happy to oblige him, and soon found himself matching Kame's rhythmic stroking of his own arousal. They pressed together feverishly, skin against skin wherever they could reach, lips and tongues and hands working in perfect harmony towards a frenzied conclusion.

Neither could hold out much longer. Jin bit down on his lip to keep from screaming, but Kame nixed that plan by forcing Jin's mouth open with his own, worrying at him until he gave up and figured if Kame wanted to risk his hearing, there was nothing he could do but let nature take its course. Kame's hands slowed to a teasing tenderness, not quite enough to take him all the way there, but when Jin felt Kame's mouth close over the shockstick spot again it was enough to drive him over the edge. His cry echoed throughout the empty bridge, wordless ecstasy given form, and it sent sufficient shivers of sensation through Kame's pleasure-wracked body that he came less than a minute later.

He slumped down against Jin's chest in sticky satisfaction, weary but relieved. Things might not be perfect between them yet, but they'd just gotten a lot closer to it.

"You know," Jin commented as he stroked Kame's hair with one still-shaking hand, "I don't think your shipboard confinement is going to be so bad after all."

\-----

Over in Docking Bay 94, not half a mile away from the KAT-TUN, Commodore Yamashita was entertaining guests in his private quarters on the Pin.

"I called it," Yamapi said smugly, holding out his hand for the cash. "Five minutes. I know Jin better than any of you."

"But Kame made the first move," Nakamaru protested, refusing to hand over the pot.

"It still counts!"

"But the bet was how long it would take *Jin* to pounce after we all left the ship," Koki said. "You're not getting that money, even if you do out-rank us."

"It's not that easy to tell without visuals," Junno began, then broke off as he noticed Ueda.

The first officer of the KAT-TUN was staring dazedly at the speaker, now thankfully silent, and muttering "Chairs? What is it about chairs?" to himself.

"He'll get over it," Yamapi said cheerfully, and changed the frequency. "Anybody want to take bets on Arashi instead? They've been experimenting with aphrodisiacs for use in undercover operations this week, so we'll all get plenty of opportunities to win!"

KAT-TUN's T, T, U and N shared a despairing look and wondered if they might not be better off back on board their own ship, lovestruck captains or no...even if they'd never be able to keep a straight face on the bridge ever again.

"Well? What do you say?" Yamapi asked.

Ueda spoke for all of them when he replied, "Is it too late for us to become deserters?"


End file.
